Giving focus to the Cultural, Scientific and Social Dimension of EU - CELAC relations

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EU-CELAC social cooperation

Cooperation on social issues for enhanced mutual understanding

Due to its international profile as a normative power, the EU has traditionally put emphasis - especially through the development policy in its external policies – on social issues such as employment, poverty, social cohesion, education, social protection and training. It is in the strongest interest of the EU to secure international partners around a similar set of social norms and ways to organise society for two reasons:

From an economic point of view, the emphasis on social policies serves to promote social stability and conflict prevention abroad, securing thus the functioning of the international society. Furthermore, the trend is to place social issues such as employment, fiscal policies, social protection and social security in transnational spaces due to the global interdependent economic structure and the associated risks and contingencies if individual countries fail in managing its national social contracts.

From a normative point of view, the dialogues on social policies reflect the EU’s value-based identity and commitment to democracy and social rights as a model for economic, social and political integration and social cohesion. In this sense, the article 9 of the Treaty on the Functioning of theEuropean Union (TFEU) outlines that a social clause to improve employment, guarantee social protection and fight exclusion must guide all policies and activities of the EU, enhancing the idea of a “social Europe” as a cross-cutting undertaking.

State of the Art of EU-CELAC social cooperation

The social policies detailed above have been a key aspect of the EU-CELAC relation since the early nineties and the transitions to democracy in LAC and specifically social cohesion has been top priority of the EUCELAC biregional agenda since the Guadalajara Summit in 2004. Since 2006, the EU and CELAC have held a total of four High Level EU-CELAC Fora on Social Cohesion.

Social cohesion is also the main focus of the EurosociAL programme, launched in 2004 with the aim of supporting the design, reform and implementation of public policies to tackle social inequalities in Latin America through training, technical assistance and monitoring in four main areas, with an important component of South-South cooperation. The Caribbean is not involved in the EurosociAL programme but social cohesion and dialogues on other social issues are integral part of the Joint Caribbean-EU Partnership Strategy from 2012 and the EU-CARIFORUM Economic and Partnership Agreement from 2008. Finally, the Multiannual Indicative Programme 2014-2020 allocates €925 million for actions in various social fieldsrelated to human development with a special emphasis on Central America.

At the bilateral level, both the EU and its Member States engage actively in support and development programmes and policy dialogues in specific aspects of the social field, such as sectorial dialogues on employment, migration, drugs and other. Overall, the number of activities and beneficiaries of these actions and programmes is high and they count with an important visibility. On the other hand, the initiatives in the social area are implemented under a development perspective and mostly disconnected with the initiatives under cultural and scientific cooperation.